Books like Six of Crows
What should you read after Leigh Bardugo’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Leigh Bardugo
- 2015
- Young adult fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Six of Crows
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
The adult ancestor of Kaz Brekker: a gang of thieves, a city of canals and knives, and a con that keeps folding open to reveal another con underneath.
- An impossible heist
- A plan inside the plan
- A criminal underworld city
- Adult, with much worse violence
Best for the crewThe Gilded Wolves
Roshani Chokshi
Six specialists, one impossible acquisition, Belle Epoque Paris instead of Ketterdam. The team dynamic is the whole point, and Chokshi knows which book you just finished.
- A crew with six points of view
- An impossible heist
- Banter under pressure
- Puzzles slow the pace
Best for a plan inside the planThe Thief
Megan Whalen Turner
A quiet road-trip fantasy that turns out to have been a magic trick the whole time. If Kaz's withheld plan was your favourite thing, Turner does it better.
- A plan inside the plan
- Backstories doled out slowly
- An impossible heist
- Small and slow until it isn't
- Great match
The Queen's Thief
Megan Whalen Turner
The series under its collected name — same Gen, same trick of telling you everything and nothing, and it deepens considerably as the books go on.
- A plan inside the plan
- Backstories doled out slowly
- A criminal underworld city
- Overlaps with The Thief
Great matchRed Seas Under Red Skies
Scott Lynch
Locke and Jean run a casino con and then get press-ganged onto a pirate ship. Pure caper pleasure, if you want the crew without the grief.
- An impossible heist
- A plan inside the plan
- Banter under pressure
- Second book; start with the first
Best for the heist mechanicsFoundryside
Robert Jackson Bennett
A thief steals the wrong object and finds herself arguing with it. Bennett builds a magic system with rules tight enough to break, which is what a heist needs.
- An impossible heist
- A criminal underworld city
- Banter under pressure
- More worldbuilding exposition
Great matchVicious
V.E. Schwab
Schwab writing people who have decided morality is negotiable. No heist, but the same cold competence and the same pleasure in characters uninterested in being good.
- Damage that doesn't get fixed
- Backstories doled out slowly
- A plan inside the plan
- Two rivals, not a crew
Great matchCity of Brass
S. A. Chakraborty
Starts with a con artist working the streets of Cairo and ends somewhere much larger. If Inej and Nina's divided loyalties held you, the djinn politics will too.
- A criminal underworld city
- Backstories doled out slowly
- A crew with six points of view
- Epic scale, slower burn
Worth a look — with a warningThe Poppy War
R. F. Kuang
The same appetite for characters who pay real prices, taken a great deal further. Kuang will not protect you the way Bardugo occasionally does.
- Damage that doesn't get fixed
- Backstories doled out slowly
- Atrocity depicted in detail
Worth a look — with a warningNevernight
Jay Kristoff
Assassin school, a girl with a grudge, and a shadow that eats fear. It delivers the Ketterdam brutality; the prose is considerably more pleased with itself.
- Damage that doesn't get fixed
- A plan inside the plan
- Slow-burn attractions
- Explicit sex and gore
Great matchDaughter of the Burning City
Amanda Foody
A travelling carnival, an illusionist whose creations are being murdered, and a found family that behaves like one. Closer to the crew's warmth than to its crimes.
- A crew with six points of view
- A criminal underworld city
- Damage that doesn't get fixed
- Whodunnit rather than heist
Worth a look — with a warningShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
The same world three years earlier, aimed at a younger reader. Useful for Grisha context, but it is a chosen-one story rather than a crew story.
- Slow-burn attractions
- A criminal underworld city
- A crew with six points of view
- Chosen-one plot and a love triangle
Best for the impossible jobThe Final Empire
Brandon Sanderson
A thieving crew hired to topple a god-emperor, planned like a job rather than a quest. Sanderson runs heist logic across an entire empire.
- An impossible heist
- A crew with six points of view
- A plan inside the plan
- Epic fantasy length
What should you read after Six of Crows?
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch — the adult ancestor of Kaz Brekker: a gang of thieves, a city of canals and knives, and a con that keeps folding open to reveal another con underneath.
If what stayed with you was a crew with six points of view, read The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi instead: six specialists, one impossible acquisition, Belle Epoque Paris instead of Ketterdam. The team dynamic is the whole point, and Chokshi knows which book you just finished. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner is the other strong option — a quiet road-trip fantasy that turns out to have been a magic trick the whole time. If Kaz's withheld plan was your favourite thing, Turner does it better.
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